Canada's multicultural crisis?

There is a new issue of the Walrus out, though you wouldn’t know it from the magazine’s website. The cover story is another piece on Canadian identity from Alan Gregg. Most of the article is a summary of the history of Canada’s immigration policy, followed by some good data from UofT prof Jeffrey Reitz on how well our current multiculturalism policies are working for new visible minorities. “Not too well,” is the answer.

Since the post-cartoon chaos started overseas, there has been the usual self-congratulatory stuff in the papers here in Canada, arguing that there hasn’t been any comparable violence here because Canada has a more benign and tolerant attitude toward immigrants, especially muslims.

Gregg isn’t so sure. Here’s the key section:

Unlike Britain and France, however, which began accepting visible-minority immigrants after WWII, Canada did not do so in any real numbers until the 1970s. Consequently, second-generation immigrants represent only 14 percent of Canada’s current visible-minority population…

… given current settlement trends and growing income disparities, Canada may indeed face the kinds of ethnic conflict that have beset England and France. Instead of having more effective multicultural policies or societal tolerance, Canada has avoided these problems to date largely because it got into the visible-minority immigration game a generation later.